(+++) WET AND NOT TOO WILD

Hurricamp! By Steph Katzovi. Brown Books Kids. $9.99.

     Trying too hard is not just something that preteens do – it is something that publishers of books for preteens do. That is the situation with Steph Katzovi’s Hurricamp! It is not a bad book at all, but it is so determined to mine the usual preteen lodes of friendship, family, embarrassment, innocence and self-discovery that you can almost see the chapters ticking off the various “got that one!” boxes associated with easy-to-read novels for preteen girls.

     The premise of books like this involves getting the protagonist – who, hopefully, has a notable name that will attract readers to her, in this case Laura “Noodle” Newman – away from her comfort zone and the sort of adult supervision she is used to, placing her in unfamiliar circumstances, having things go awry, and having her learn through mild adversity that she is stronger, more capable and more mature than she ever knew.

     Cue the hurricane. Well, not at first – there has to be suitable scene-setting, and Katzovi knows how to provide it. Noodle, who explains that her nickname came from a meal incident when she was two years old, has to be worried about coming to Camp Hillside at all; miserable when she arrives; determined to go home as soon as possible; good at writing letters to her family, asking to be picked up (preteens in books like this are almost always good writers); and subject to various levels of difficulty and humiliation – jumping into an unexpectedly cold lake, being unable to think of anything to say when on Radio Hillside, etc. She has to dislike or at least be indifferent to her fellow campers, and she has to be involved in something that makes everything even worse than it already is – in this case, lost eyeglasses (she does not have a spare pair) that lead to a search in which the kind counselor of the Sandpipers is injured seriously enough to have to go home, being replaced by an unpleasant grouch.

     One of the pleasures of books such as Hurricamp! is knowing pretty much how things will go but not exactly what will happen – there is a comfort level to the formulaic elements of the plot that readers in the target age-and-gender group will find attractive. If there is nothing particularly surprising here, there is also nothing particularly upsetting – although readers more interested in being editors than writers will notice some sloppiness of presentation, such as spelling the name of camper Aries “Aried” and repeatedly using the nonexistent word “alright.” Anyway, about halfway through the book, when the scene has been fully set and the various characters fully introduced, the storm associated with the book’s title worsens, all the lights in camp go out, the girls’ cabin leaks, and the Sandpipers have to spend the night in the Rec Center – but fortunately, Noodle happens to have dry paper so she can keep writing about her adventures.

     Soon the girls are having a food fight to take their minds off the (mild) tension associated with the storm, and then the storm passes without really doing much of anything, and by that time everyone has bonded with everyone else and even the unpleasant substitute counselor has gotten a tad nicer. Eventually Noodle gets a second turn on radio, and she announces to herself, “So long, Sad Old Noodle. Hello, Radio Noodle!” This is not quite the end, though. After this radio show, the Sandpipers decide to take over the whole radio station for a show of their own, giving Noodle a chance to say she wants to “thank Hurricane Hilda for shaking things up a bit,” since “the Sandpipers became friends because of that crazy situation.” Of course, taking over the radio station gets the girls in trouble, and Noodle offers to take all the blame and accept punishment for everybody, but there isn’t really any punishment after all – readers will not be surprised to discover that – and soon afterwards, camp is over and everyone says a rather tearful goodbye and plans to return the following year.

     Hurricamp! is a nice book, rather old-fashioned and naïve from start to finish – entirely by intent and design. It is not particularly surprising, not particularly difficult to read, and not particularly memorable – scarcely the sort of book that the target readership will likely return to again and again. On the other hand, it is pleasant while it lasts, unchallenging in plot and vocabulary, and just the sort of novel that preteen girls are likely to enjoy if they look upon it as mild escapism and take it along to a place where they may want to relax and let their mind drift for a while. Maybe they should bring it to summer camp.